Amaretti: This lit­tle cookie is a hol­i­day tra­di­tion in Italy (and beyond) which has a delight­ful story: “In the early 1700s, a Milanese bishop or car­di­nal sur­prised the town of Saronno with a visit. A young cou­ple, res­i­dents of the town, wel­comed him and paid trib­ute with an orig­i­nal con­fec­tion: on the spur of the moment, they had baked bis­cuits made of sugar, egg whites, and crushed apri­cot ker­nels or almonds. These so pleased the vis­it­ing bishop that he blessed the two with a happy and life­long mar­riage, result­ing in the preser­va­tion of the secret recipe over many generations.”

Brutti ma Buoni: Lit­er­ally trans­lated as “ugly but good”, these craggy lit­tle cook­ies are made using a mix­ture of nuts, egg whites, liqueur, and a bit of cocoa . You can find a recipe from Mario Batali here.

Can­nolo alla Sicil­iana: What we would call a can­noli here in the US (as in, “leave the gun, take the…”). These lit­tle sweet­ies con­sist of tube-shaped shells of fried pas­try dough, filled with a sweet, creamy fill­ing usu­ally con­tain­ing ricotta cheese (or alter­na­tively, but less tra­di­tion­ally, sweet­ened Mas­car­pone) blended with some com­bi­na­tion of vanilla, choco­late, pis­ta­chio, Marsala wine, rose­wa­ter or other flavorings.

Cas­sata: The cas­sata sicil­iana con­sists of round sponge cake moist­ened with fruit juices or liqueur and lay­ered with ricotta cheese, can­died peel, and a choco­late or vanilla fill­ing sim­i­lar to can­noli cream. It is cov­ered with a shell of marzi­pan, pink and green pas­tel col­ored icing, and dec­o­ra­tive designs. The cas­sata is finally topped with can­died fruit depict­ing cher­ries and slices of cit­rus fruit char­ac­ter­is­tic of Sicily.

Crostata: A crostata is an Ital­ian baked dessert tart, and a form of pie. It is tra­di­tion­ally pre­pared by fold­ing the edges of the dough over the top of the jam/marmalade fill­ing, cre­at­ing a more “rough” look, rather than a uni­form, cir­cu­lar shape and topped with var­i­ous jams, pas­try cream or fresh fruit. A typ­i­cal cen­tral Ital­ian vari­ety replaces jam with ricotta mixed with sugar, cocoa or pieces of choco­late and anisetta; this is called crostata di ricotta. In terms of recipes, doesn’t this one from Her­bivo­ra­cious sound fantastic?

Pan­doro (or pan d’oro): This one is fairly sim­i­lar to panet­tone in that it is a tra­di­tional Ital­ian sweet yeast bread, most pop­u­lar around Christ­mas and New Year. What defines it? Well, it is gen­er­ally more cakey and less fruit-heavy than panet­tone, and it is tra­di­tion­ally shaped like a frus­tum with an 8 pointed-star sec­tion. And–deliciously enough–“Modern taste some­times calls for Pan­doro to have a hole cut into its bot­tom and a part of the soft inte­rior to be removed, the cav­ity is then filled with chan­tilly cream or vanilla gelato. Cream or gelato can be served as a gar­nish to pan­doro slices.” You can find a recipe here.

Panet­tone: This is another tra­di­tional hol­i­day treat. Sim­ply put, it’s “a soft, north Ital­ian yeast brioche with can­died fruit, usu­ally pre­pared for Christmas”–but it’s steeped in tra­di­tion and lore which you can read about here, if you’re so inclined; you can find a recipe here.

Tiramisù: This treat is not baked, but it sure is deli­cious, made of savoiardi (oth­er­wise known as lady fin­ger bis­cuits) dipped in espresso or strong cof­fee, lay­ered with a whipped mix­ture of egg yolks, mas­car­pone, and sugar, and topped with cocoa.

So– which one do you plan on making?

* This arti­cle was pub­lished with per­mis­sion of CakeSpy.com